1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communications systems and authentication. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for demographically selective distribution of information and entertainment and for user authentication.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Internet has rapidly become a major vehicle for information dispersal, education, entertainment, commerce, and other forms of communication and interaction. A number of websites including portal sites present news, entertainment, shopping opportunities, and other content, with revenue often derived from banner advertising. The advertising presented on such sites i.e., usually broadcast indiscriminately to whomever visits the site, and thus is often of little interest to the web site visitor, and indeed, is often considered to be a nuisance. On the other hand, it is difficult for a variety of reasons to induce people to enter personal information about themselves so that advertising can be customized and targeted.
The Internet also gives rise to jurisdictional complications. Website operators may wish to offer products and services, but at the same time wish to avoid conducting business with persons in certain foreign countries or other jurisdictions, so as to avoid exposing themselves to personal jurisdiction in foreign and unfamiliar courts.
Website operators may wish to restrict the persons who may view and interact with content of their web sites to persons having certain demographic characteristics. Web site operators may also wish to prevent visitors from entering personal information unless those visitors are of specified minimum age, in order to comply with child on-line privacy protection laws. Web site operators may also wish to restrict access to adult entertainment content to those persons eighteen years or older in order to comply with legal restrictions. A number of adult verification services exist for providing personal identification numbers which can be used to access adult entertainment sites. However, those services are believed to rely upon the existence of a credit card in order to determine whether someone qualifies for access to such sites. Because some credit card issuers issue credit cards to minors, those services do not actually verify a person's age.
Various attempts have also been made to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content, particularly from Internet terminals installed in public libraries. Filtering software is available, but such software is prone to filtering out either too much or too little content, or both at the same time. At least one court has struck down as unconstitutional a county policy requiring libraries to install filtering software.
Chat groups and other forums exist on the Internet for the interchange of ideas between and among website visitors. Like any other communication, sometimes it is desirable to restrict discussions to only certain persons or certain groups of people.
Another issue that faces users of electronic systems, such as the Internet, is user authentication. For both the protection of the user and merchants and other entities engaging in transactions or communications with the user, it is often necessary to authenticate the user, meaning to verify that the user is the individual that the user purports to be.
One of the problems and difficulties with user identification has been the proliferation of identification information about users. This has made it easier for the identity of a user to be misappropriated.
For this very same reason, users are often hesitant to provide the most confidential classes of identifying information, such as their social security numbers.